Why Do We Capitalize I?

Why do we capitalize the first-person pronoun, I? The short answer is because we do. But that’s not a very satisfactory answer. Even though it feels natural to English speakers, capitalizing I is unusual. In fact, English is the only language that does. Germanic and Romantic languages typically have some conventions for capitalizing proper nouns, like Deutschland (in German) or Place de la Concorde (in French), but English is the only one that selfishly insists on capitalizing the personal pronoun. We do not, you will recall, even capitalize we.

(Wondering why we capitalize letters at all? Learn the full story here.)

It turns out that this unusual convention was a bit of an accident. In Old and Middle English, the word for “I” was closer to its German cousin, “ich,” and it was often spelled “ic.” At this point, the word was not capitalized. However, the pronunciation changed over time and so did the spelling, losing the consonant c.

At first, the new word, i, was left lowercase. However, it began to grow taller than other words. It grew for a silly reason: a single letter looks bad. Look at it: i. How sad. By the time Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales in the late 1300s, I, the personal pronoun, was slightly taller than its lowercase equivalent. From that point on, it was typically capitalized.

The only other accepted single-letter word in English, a, is a larger presence on the page. Its appearance isn’t as offensive as the thin i.

Today, though, some of us are regressing. In e-mails and instant message conversations, capitalization conventions are backsliding.

399 Comments

It is indicative of our western American culture which values self-importance and self-aggrandizing above the importance of others. I am in favor of allowing mid-sentence use of the capitalized word “i” to go extinct.

Words in English are written according to their grammatical rules. Sometimes things evolve and so are some vocabularies in some languages. Then comes a researcher, or someone with a keen eye, and wanted to make something out of it, Wow, it was not like that before, let’s bring back the original form! What for? Is he aiming for fame for himself? Is the change hurting others?
Anyone can write any way he wants, and we cannot say he is out of line in any way, but he is out of the rules of English Grammar.

yes because Im 13 and earlyer this year one of my friends told me to capitalize I and im telling another friend to capitalize I and all over Miiverese I have only seen a few people capitalizeing there I’s

I stands tall when it is ‘I’ and not ‘i’. It don’t think it should/will go extinct. We should always retain the intrinsic value of old, that is Gold. There will always be talks on reason on “why something is the way it is”. Either we know the reason or we don’t; but the bottom line is, modify it if and only if it makes the world (or precisely the object) better. Let’s stick with a tall I.

I think if the letter i is at the beginning then yes capitalize it but i think if it is within a sentence there is no logical reason thus its naming convention should be changed. It is not good to do things “just because”. That is not the scientific way!

okaychrisishallnotleavespacesusepunctuationnorusecapitallettersbecause “it is not scientific, since spaces, punctuation, and capital letters are used ‘just because’”.
If you can make-out what is at the start of this message, go ahead and be unconventional. More power to you!

Spaces are used to separate units of meaning, and becaue it’s harder to read without spaces. Changing I to i, as we often do in text messages and social network posts, does not affect comprehension whatsoever.

It’s good to have standards in written English, especially within publications, because consistency lends an air of confidence. Still, the point is, capitalizing “I” is arbitary. Putting spaces between words is not. Your argument is a bit of a non sequitur considering the rest of the post.

D’s argument is contradictory, but, Chris, there’s no reason to go back to the old way, either. Would we gain anything? No. Would we lose anything? No. If the letter I were to all of a sudden be left in lowercase in the middle of sentences, reading in English would not be affected one iota.

Hey, I certainly hope that we as people can get together and totally destroy our own language. This makes it possible for everyone to get a great job. If we all sound like morons, we can all be scientists, doctors and presidents. One would never know if we were intelligent or just outright stupid.

I guess for the I or i part, when referring to ourselves I always thought we used the capital I. As for the lowercase i, I always thought it was used in things such as stories for example.

John wrote that i was using the uppercase and lowercase I incorrectly, referring to myself and not himself. (PS, I am no English major and probably made a mistake or two here.)

I do hope that internet talk goes away. I am scared to death on the future of us, our children, and our country.

I hope that the capitalisation of the letter “I” doesn’t go “extinct”. The only reason it would “go extinct” is purely because people don’t want to put the extra effort in to capitalising it in their e-mails and texts.
Yes, languages change as time and culture does, but if this were to be changed it would be purely because people are becoming lazy and neglect to put effort in to speech and typing, not because of any fantastic, significant reason.

The automatic capitilization of I in Microsoft word is a true nuisance for scandinavian speakers.
In scandinavaian languages the word “in” is spelt i and thus get capitalized by Microsoft word. In Danish there is furthermore a capitilzed “I” meaning “you” (second person plural”). The preposition in is quite common use in most languages if anybody can tell me how to turn the automatic capitalization of this word off in word, I would be most happy

Great article. I always wondered why “I” is capitalized. Being German, it never bothered me to capitalize certain nouns in English.
In @mails or texting I don’t mind the “extra work”…..to me it just looks better, and it is easier to read. There is nothing selfish about the “I”.

Oh my gosh I’m really disappointed in the IGNORANCE in Americans and how we have no structure. I think everything would be just find if Americans stuck to the laws of grammar. Seriosly people have you ever noticed the negative effects of using “text speak”. Usually you actually start to write and talk like that.

as it mentioned in the comment above due the use of electronic devices such as
mobiles and computers for messaging purpose becomes the great headache for
the survival of capitalization rule.to save time people use only the lower case letters during typing.but how ever,if capitalization is totally exticate ,what disastreous problem the language phase!

Jokes aside, the English language changes. You can’t just try to declare your form of English to be the gold standard and insult everybody else, as some posters here seem to be doing. Even without that wonderful factoid, it is true that many teenagers deviate from standard spelling and grammar in their texts. However, these people still manage to be understood and have no problem with using more formal grammar structures. it is pure folly to assume that the English language is going down the hole because a new form of communication has been invented and is being used fully.

On a completely unrelated and possibly biased side note, does anyone else here feel that no matter the era, the adult generation thinks that the world is going to end when the younger generation takes over?

Hopefully, it won’t. I hate the text speak and I’ve never used it. I would always correct my friends if they used text speak and hey, I made a difference with my friends on Facebook. They start to capitalize now, which is great to me. Having the capitalized ‘I’ go extinct is going to be a huge deal for me. Like I always said, “Type correctly for me to take you seriously.” And whenever I correct someone with their capitalization, they tell it’s not ‘cool’ for my age. Just because I’m younger than thirteen, does that mean I have to be a lazy person like the people at my school? No, I don’t think so.

I think people have just become lazy with their writing. Complaining about a simple hold of the shift key is the ultimate in laziness. It can be done with the left hand while using the right hand for the I. Laziness in everything has become an epidemic now. I actually hate to text prefering to speak rather than type out a whole text. It adds the personal touch and while in sales and marketing it was customary to make a call to win the client over, it made them feel you really were interested in their business.

Now can we figure out a way to get computers to take an apostrophe for those of us given a name like O’Reilly who probably makes sure the Bill version gets his name done properly. Ever hear an automated machine pronounce a name that should have an apostrope? It is so garbled. I demand a campaign by all of us to get it done. Apostrophe named people UNITE!!!!!!!

I personally think that the lowercase i looks weird. Even though I really wouldn’t mind if the uppercase i went extinct. I guess people are just used the uppercase i. iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

HarD I messed up on my first comment don’t read it
Find the i
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IIIIIIIIIIIIII||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Find the i IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII||||||IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII|||||||IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII|||||||IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIiIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

That is not weird. My dad always uses correct punctuation, grammar, capitalization, etc. in his emails. I have never seen him write or type something without proper capitalization (and very sophisticated speech). I do the same thing.

It seems as though grammar itself is becoming less important. I personally think that capitalizing “i” will become extinct. But I will continue to use it. “I” is used as a proper noun like a name. That’s just how I see it.

LOL PROFFESER!! Like OMG!!! I like *airy teen posh sigh* think that is SO LEGIT. Snap. HooHooHoo! I like *airy teen posh sigh* Completely ponipagrayy! LOL. Actually, I think those who like using the small “i” for meaning yourself should just be content with being a little person with NO possibility of improving yourself in communication or employment.
Imagine a College Professor or an employer receiving a written paper from you that is written entirely in cell phone texting style. That is the person who will fail in both class and life. Writing is important in life. If we are unable or unwilling to learn the right way then we will not have the opportunities to improve our own life styles.
Would you rather be a member of a sales staff, with an impressive salary, or would you rather be a store clerk, at minimum wage? Communication is what it is all about. Do you want to be an unemployable kid at age 45 or a successful business person at age 25? Make the decision to communicate properly with society rather than be a teenager till death, failing all the way.

Agreed with clivebeesly. It’s been a part of writing for a while. People have gotten into the habit of writing it like that. It is an interesting and unique part of english and it will be passed down over and over.

I think the only reason we are “digressing” is because we, as a culture, are simply lazy. (No offense to those of you who have thought it out and decided not to place yourselves above others, etc.) I think we would remain with the capitalized “I” were we not so lazy, however, I also doubt that the fact of our laziness will change anytime soon.

@Ryan(16)
If the sixteen refers to your age, you are a brilliant young man. Have you read A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess? In this novel, the author creates a language which is a conglomeration of several languages. Perhaps you should write down your own ideas- you may be a novel writer in the making….

As far as this goes in text messaging, most of the phones that I have had (including my current one) automatically capitalize the letter “i” when it is typed alone. People would actually have to make an effort to make it lowercase!

It seems that most of the comments I read are fixated on the selfish appearance of capitalizing the pronoun I. However the article has a completely different conclusion for the change and here I will quote the exact phrase. “It grew for a silly reason: a single letter looks bad.”
Another thing, I saw someone refer to the french word ‘ je ‘ and how it was only capitalized when at the beginning of a sentence. I can not help but point out that it is not a singular letter but, in fact, two.
The reason for the capitalization, although fickle, is not vain. It was a simple matter of appearance. Writers felt that the lowercase was just not as appealing…

Now about the subject of regression. I understand that most youth and even some adults use improper grammar and spelling when texting or typing. This is for convenience. I have yet to find a job that will accept someone who uses ‘text-talk’ on an application. It is more likely that this is a phase in writing such as calligraphy. At some point in the future humanity may stray from this practice as well.

I don’t believe the capital i will go extinct for one, simple, reason: with all of our contractions and digital short-hand these days, we have more and more abbreviations which promote unusual use of punctuation.

How many times have we seen sentences like this? “Mr. H., will you, please – for the love of all that is good(and decent) – cont. I’m requesting extra time.”

In situations like this, the period is ambiguous in it’s meaning. It could signify an abbreviation, an end of sentence, use of crib or shorthand, or even simply a typo. The capital I, while not clear if part of the previous sentence or not, helps to provide a breaking point for the reader… something to take as a given in an uncertain situation, which can help to break up and interpret the surrounding messages. Use of a lowercase i could be even more problematic. Might it be ennumeration? Bullet? Perhaps subtext or a cited footnote? What about summary confusion with other methods of notation?

While a capital I may not be as speedy to type (though the use of a keyboard with two hands reduces this argument to a moot point), it is also very easy to see the emotive use of I as a statement of value assigned to a singular individual, someone of importance, something that English speakers are well known for.

I always capitalize the letter I and other things like that because it doesn’t seem grammatically correct to not do stuff like that- even on an email or this I am used to writing normally. Weird, I know.

Those who like using the small “i” for meaning yourself should just be content with being a little person with NO possibility of improving yourself in communication or employment.

Imagine a College Professor or an employer receiving a written paper from you that is written entirely in cell phone texting style. That is the person who will fail in both class and life. Writing is important in life. If we are unable or unwilling to learn the right way then we will not have the opportunities to improve our own life styles.

Would you rather be a member of a sales staff, with an impressive salary, or would you rather be a store clerk, at minimum wage? Communication is what it is all about. Do you want to be an unemployable kid at age 45 or a successful business person at age 25? Make the decision to communicate properly with society rather than be a teenager till death, failing all the way.

The word “I” serves as a proper noun: referring to a specific person and therefore it is logical according to the rules of pronouns. Each time we use the word it replaces speaking our names in the third person ie : we do not announce our arrival by saying “jimmy is here,” Instead we say “I am here.”. It actually makes more sense to capitalize than to not capitalize. On the other hand, when we use th expression “every Tom, Dick, and Harry,” we are not referring to specific individuals and those names should not be capitalized. IMHO.

The capitalised I will not become extinct.
Regardless of the reasoning behind its conception, it makes absolute sense to capitalise I unless we wish to write about ourselves in the third person.
“Jessica and i went to the park.” Why would we capitalise Jessica but not the letter that represents us in this sentence?

As long as we uphold respect in ourselves and our language we will continue to capitalise I.
Do not allow the mindless degenerates who misuse our language to take even a shred of pride in it and its correct execution from you.

Interesting how many people thought they were leaving the first comment, even into the second day of comments, when not one of them actually did.

The first “first comment” was over 4 hours after the actual first. Then there was another 12 hours later, and two more 4 hours after that. Then another 3 hours later, and another after 4 more hours, then one 30 minutes later. All in all, the “first” comments spanned a full 24 hours!

I could understand if someone had thought they were first, but a few people snuck in a few seconds ahead of them; but 4 HOURS later?! And worse yet, someone the next day who still thought they were first?!

English has already essentially become two distinct languages, separated by the lazy and the purists. I’ve never really thought of myself as a purist, but I’m certainly not lazy, so as time passes and the lazy become even more so, I suppose I will be what I consider a purist.

The language was about due for an overhaul. Think of Old English, Middle English, and even King James English. Now we have Formal English, and whatever they’ll be calling this lazy business. It started many years ago with the acceptance of a sloppiness in spoken word that was not allowed in writing. However, the laziness has definitely taken a giant leap with the dramatic increase in email and text messaging.

I will continue to use spelling, grammar, and punctuation the way I was taught. But since today’s public school system in America allows students to graduate whether they’ve learned the material or not, the next generation, as a whole, will not remember how they were taught.

I think that Americans are just becoming far too lazy and illiterate. NO MATTER WHAT THE AGE, I believe that all should be fluent in how to PROPERLY write their capitalized and lowercase letters. It seems only right to capitalize “I” when referring to oneself when we do the same when referring to someone else in particular; “Lisa and Jeff went to Louie’s house while *I* stayed home.”

To do away with even a small amount of the grammar that sets us apart from other parts of the world and often makes our words more sophisticated would be EXTREMELY idiotic and foolish! Do away with “I”, and what’s next? Will we be saying “Jon pizza ate” or “How doing Jane” instead of “I ate the pizza/Jon ate the pizza” or “how are you”? While they are at it, why not just get rid of half of the dictionary and call it good? Keep things simple to the point of insanity.

Be it in instant message, text message, or comments on one of the social network sites, I will always keep my words and letters as proper as I can!

English is a combination of many languages, and can have great meaning and extraordinary descriptive power when used properly. Let’s not lose that, people!

It looks good when u write on paper the Capital ” i ” but when u type on a computer it’s I sometimes in fonts it’s the same as the small l so Illustrations could differ that’s why, but we are in the Digital ERA I think there will be modifications in fonts we use That’s all, like the most common fonts used .. I don’t know which one is this ..

The thing is, English can go get stuffed, seriously it has the be the weirdest languages and hardest to learn. but without these strange rules (like i before e except after c) then it wouldn’t be English. each language has it quirks and English is the quirkiest

i’ve written a lot of words here. in short, i think a new global language should accompany our increasingly globalizing world. please read if you are interested. also, please email me if you have any criticisms, ideas, or suggestions on how to get this idea out there and noticed or if you have any reason to contact me regarding my idea.

Slightly unrelated, but i personally am very against all of our silly rules and conventions. this may sound very controversial or even crazy, but i seriously think we should give this idea a good thought. i think it would be a great idea for a lot of smart people who are experts on language and… well… anyone who could possibly have anything to do with this from around the world to get together to create a new global language. with all the countries intermingling so much i suspect that in the future people we will become more of a planet earth rather than multitude of countries. just look at the internet. never before has it been so easy to communicate with anyone from anywhere on the earth and in the blink of an eye. this ease of communication will only get easier. notice the global cultures arising too. with this should come a global language. this language should have a set of laws rather than rules. laws, that if broken while communicating, render the communication meaningless. this language should be so easy to use by the pure logic involved, that anyone can learn and use it. this language should be easily interpreted by artificial intelligence. it could be sort of like a programming language. sure something like this will take some time to implement, but the benefits might be worth it in the end. for example, with this new language, “i” and “I” should have such a difference in meaning that it would be unthought of to interchange them. letters like “c” should be eliminated or assigned a different meaning, because it can only function as an “s” or a “k”. it doesn’t have it’s own sound. cannot should be two words. in fact a new character set should be made. there should be more symbols(or something) involved to make the written language more expressive and meaningful. sure this could be accomplished by writing using every word in the dictionary, but there has to be an easier, more logical way. one thing to keep in mind that electronic paper is most likely on it’s way, which makes editing (e.g. moving or re-sizing entire paragraphs) a breeze. (im a bit of a futurist. scratch that. i am very much so) one thing i didn’t think of is to research on the subject. so, everything here is purely my imagination.

this doesn’t even begin my thoughts on this idea. i suppose i have to stop somewhere, but if anyone is interested and has anything to say about this, please email me. thank you.

I personally think that writing a capitalized ‘I’ is also signifying too much of the self. A small ‘i’ is more humble and polite. Since long, i stopped using a capitalized I and instead write a capitalized You to attach more importance to the person i am referring to.
But i guess this will not lead to the extinction of I.

I don’t think it will become extinct, though I do think many will stop applying the capital.

For me typing ‘I’ correctly isn’t a matter of egocentrism or how many milliseconds longer it will take. I type ‘I’ using a capital because it is correct to do so. If it were a matter of speed then we may also consider dropping the ‘s’ from the 3rd person singular in the present tense and say ‘she type’ instead of ‘she types’. After all, the meaning isn’t lost. But if it looks strange to do so, so too should ‘i’.

You know what I noticed? when I’m writing, I write the pronoun “I” sort fo how it appears here, just a long line, but when I capitalize a word beginning with the letter “i” i write it with the line above and below it. So, in a way its like “I” as a pronoun and “i” as a letter are two separate symbols in my mind. I is capitalized so that it is recognizable as a whole word and not a unfinished “it” or “is”, that’s how it was explained to me.

The only (and possibly logical) explanation I could come up with is that when we speak to or write about someone, it would seem strange to think or say “Joe believes Joe will leave now” instead of “I believe I will leave now”. So another person’s name is capitalized, so shoud our term for ourselves.

i think that in informal writing (i.e. texting, IMing) capitalizing the I will go extinct. for me i usually don’t capitalize I while IMing/texting people. But in formal writing (i.e. letters, essays or just writing on paper) i have the tendency to capitalize I because its natural for me.

I never thought of that before.No I don’t think it will go back to using “i”. At least not completely. For messages like these I dont usually capitalize the letter i. Part of that is just that I forget to and i also just don’t think it is worth the effort to remember. When I type I never capitalize my “i” unless it is for school or something formal. But when I write I capitalize them. I think I am just so used to the computer doing it for me that I forget to capitalize. while writing this whole message I had to keep going back and capitalizing my i’s

What about cyrilllic? In Russian the backwards “R” which represents “I” as well as being used in other words is always a capital when on its own isn’t it? (Sorry I don’t know the name of the actual letter я )

Letting capitalization rules go out the window for any reason results in degradation of the language.

As should be implied, language degradation is not a good thing:

- “wut r u doin”
- “i lol’d”
- “y? i dnt thnk u shuld b”

Apparently quite a few people think that some rules in English can be broken to simplify matters, and thus deprive readers of intended meaning. “Why” may take longer to type than “y,” but your brain will take longer to process “y” than “why” with the added difficulty of trying to figure out what on earth he or she is meaning to say.

The same goes for capitalization. The letter at the beginning of a sentence is capitalized to ensure that readers know where the next thought or idea begins. “I” is among capitalization rules, and while it does not serve that same critical purpose, the article astutely points out that “i” is small and near-unnoticeable, especially when handwritten.

Of course, we could just scrap everything and go with the newspeak that trades our grammar rules for laziness.

That doesn’t really matter. Some people say it takes more time to reach over the shift key and press I, that’s kind of lame because it doesn’t take anymore than half a sec to do so. But I agree it does look a little weird when the lowercase i stands there by itself, especially with handwriting. Anyway, as long as no one is gonna call for “abolishing the use of capitalized letters”, I’m good.

For a short period in my life I was bothered that I seemed to perform many “egotistical” acts including the use of the personal pronoun as a capital. Then I realized that I was bothered in this way not because I was actually very non-selfish, but because I selfishly needed some “valid” way to condemn others. And on first intuitions, the only valid way to condemn others is not to do what they do, even if it’s to my detriment. So, it’s not especially noble of anyone not to capitalize “i” as a personal pronoun. All it says about them is that they haven’t thought much of anything through and selfishly want others to be non-selfish, decompose in place, and die off.

Extinct? Perhaps not, it will go the same place that penmanship, correct spelling, proper grammar and other civilized formalities will go — including dictionaries. They’ll reside with the old-timers as relics of a past age.

Ii think i should go lowercase i mean i play minecraft and i see “i” lowercase all the time. the only reason it got capitalized in the first place is because people are stuck-up and greedy and like to feel important. so i say let i go lowercase and yeah pi-pie rocks

Even though I email my friends CONSTANTLY, I still keep the same rules for grammar — spelling, punctuation, capitalization, etc. I will occasionally resort to text-speak, such as IKR, LOL, IDK, BRB, and others that are commonly understood. I think the only time I avoid a part of grammar is when I’m IM-ing someone; I’ll often drop the *.* at the end of the sentences. I don’t think the personal I should be dropped — we need to remember proper (and respectful) grammar rules. Yes, this is coming from a teenager. Aren’t I so typical?

I don’t see the capital i going extinct, perhaps the lowercase becoming acceptable, but the capital remaining extant and perhaps always preferred. I don’t have any authority on the subject, but that seems to be the trend, yes? Grammar forms not dying out but once regarded mistakes becoming commonplace, usually for the sake of efficiency. It was once regarded as incorrect to say, “Someone dropped their umbrella,” as it confuses singulars and plurals, but it’s becoming, if not exactly approved, frequently employed and the ‘rules’ might just bend to accomodate once tongues tire of the tedious “his or her” or the removed, odd sound of “someone has dropped an umbrella” or the yet more bizarrely prophetic sounding, passive voiced, “An umbrella has been dropped by someone!”

I to i doesn’t offer any efficiency, in grammar or meaning, so I don’t see anything to accelerate or cause the switch. I like capitals! I like knowing that the River Resort is a specific company, an institution that could be found in a dessert and the river resort is a place as well, but unspecified except that it’s actually by a river. As far as ego goes, I don’t see the capital I as a stubborn highlight of some solipsistic perception any more than using i, and if that’s the point of contention our entire first-person verbiage is a much worse offender. I look at the dog. I spoke to the man. Many other languages are more communal in these descriptions, I think it’s japanese, for example, where the construction is the more egalitarian the dog and I looked at each other, even if you’re an active observer and the dog is a passive agent.

I said a lot while knowing a little, symptomatic of the internet generation, and I’m sorry for that. I thought this was fascinating, I think the I is here to stay!

I’ve been noticing the number of people who think capitalization my be going the way of the dodo bird…however, there are, amusingly enough, reason to use certain capitals.
eg. I helped my Uncle Jack off his horse.
I helped my uncle jack off his horse.
Makes a difference.

As someone with her degree in English (and a brief dabbling in Linguistics), I doubt the capital personal pronoun “I” will vanish. As mentioned in the article, it’s a visual thing: the lower-case “i” is too unassuming in the text when it’s by itself because it’s too small and narrow, and (in a sense) it is a proper name. Compare to the royal “We”, which is also capitalized.

I never thought about it really, from a high-school-point-of-veiw, but now I do see the arrogance. English, heck, America in general, is arrogant. I still capitalize it in instant messages and texts, but I feel like I might be impartial to the entire thing. The capital ‘I’ is part of culture, but also offensive when you look at it when you look at it in depth.

We love our titles, and ‘I’ shows how the individual stands out above the others..another way of stating ‘i’ am god…which we does not state….honestly, i believe this is the source of a lot of our problems.

Well, wot about a? It’s lowercase, too. Are we gonna say A A A A A A all the freaking time now? I hope not. English is possibly the dumest, languige on erth. Take my normel speling for egzample. Also inglish is A reely hard languige to lern. And stupid spell check stop corektin may.

I hope I doesn’t regress back to i. It just looks so awkward. And besides, when we refer to another person we use a capital (i.e Mom, Dad, John, Suzie.) And since we don’t speak in the third person, I think it makes sense to refer to ourselves as I rather than i. That’s just my opinion. And like a teacher once told me “Using the little i shows that you think little of yourself.”

In My opinion the word ‘ I ‘ will not extinct . . these kind of words or I can say arts of English beautify and enhances the beauty of English.
Yeah but as coming to the other facty* point SMS and other chatting technologies can ruin the English because most of the people do not even write the full spellings which is really harmful for English and its Grammar too.

I always think of “I” as the only proper pronoun; that is, it names or refers to one specific person, the speaker of the sentence. Therefore it should be capitalized. All other pronouns in English can refer to some ambiguous other people, thus are left lowercase.

Contrary to what Lezza said above, “mom” and “dad” are not titles, but rather nicknames, and as such, nouns. When addressing your mother as Mom, you’re using “Mom” as her name, instead of calling her by her given name. Thus it’s capitalized when used in that manner.

And confirming what Steve Keoster said, *all* nouns in German are capitalized. So too are 2nd person pronouns in formal mode, but the words mirror the 3rd person plural pronouns.

Final comment: when refering to God or Jesus, Christian texts in English capitalize pronouns: “I sought His love.”

I do not believe it is vain to use a capital for ‘i’. Nobody means to be when they write it, it simply looks better than it does in lower case!
That is simply an excuse for laziness, I’m afraid. Also, no one has mentioned that ‘I’ is pronounced like the capital letter ‘I’. If we spelt it “i”, then it would follow to pronounce it as ‘i’!! Which would make us Anglo-Saxons sound truly ridiculous… Don’t give in to laziness and trying to be modern for the sake of the contemporary movement. In the end, you’ll be left without the roots of your culture! And btw, I’m not yet an adult. Yet it seems I’m more prepared to preserve our language heritage than you grown ups! Like, wtf???

Will it? It probably will. Should it? Very definitely not. Why? Because these days everyone seems to be taking the lazy to everything. Some say “too much work to upper and lower case words.” Society has come of the age that words are shortened, mispelled and it appears to be acceptable and has spread like wildfire. This is not acceptable. There needs to be standards in grammer, writing and reading. Younger people have enough of a problem spelling and writing as it is what with computer doing all the thinking to compose sentences. If this slids, a lot of other proper structures will start to slid as well. Just my thoughts.
That’s “slides”, and “slide”. “Slid” is past tense. ;p

We capitalise our letters (NOUNS), which incorperates our NOM.
For example, your name on the birth certifcate, drivers licence,marriage certifcate etc. are all in capitals. There is a reason for this.

Anything you register in society becomes property of the Crown, and you have equitable rights and privilages, not ownership rights. This includes your children once you have registered them through a birth certifcate they become ward of the state. You only have priviliges to them you not ownership rights, the Goverment has ownership.

despite being a spelling/grammar nut, i don’t capitalize “i” unless i’m writing a term paper or something similarly “official’. i suppose this is out of laziness, but it also has to do with the changing fonts on the net. for instance, if this post were to be displayed in times new roman, i’d be more comfortable with the capitalization, but since it’s in some form of ariel, i don’t like to since i’m prone to mistaking it for a lowercase L.

i agree with the original reasoning, however. no other language capitalizes it unless it’s at the beginning of a sentence, so what makes english so special? >>;

i’m not going to say i hope it goes extinct, but i get the feeling that it’ll get phased out as internet culture takes over. i just hope that the rest of the grammatical rules don’t go with it; god help me if i see one more person mistake “your” for “you’re”. ><;;

About the capitalised I going extinct, highly doubt it considering teachers are always trying to correct students to following conventions of writing ‘i’ in capitals. Plus when instant messaging it’s usually colloquial, SMS abbreviations are looked upon as ‘stupid and lazy’ by older generations. However then again the younger generation have more rights to overrule them nowadays.

Without the benefits of historical etymology, I’d have supposed the change in pronunciation of, I, came from the common occurrence of taking Responsive Roll Call,– e.g. upon calling “Mr. John Doe,” the respondent answers, “Aye,” (or likewise, “Here, Present, Me, Accounted-for”) et cetera, where this word, Aye, is equivalent to Yea (pronounced, “Yae”), and translates in the modern, Yes. But the occasion, for answering, Yes, is when an individual, I, consents or acknowledges, saying, Yes, Yea, Aye– in which case it is capitalized as a one-word sentence… marvelous really: “How many Ayes do we have,” is the count of ‘I’s among the we, in agreement…. so, I, is an agreeable sort….

Other common languages appear to have something like this: German, Ja (pronounced, ‘Yah’), is rather like the English “Yea,” The French subjective, “je,” means, I, And its, Moi, is like an objective rather than subjective, Oui… in agreement with itself, e.g. “Give the apple pie to ‘Moi’.”

Interesting…However, I do not believe that capitalization of the ‘I’ will become distinct merely because e-mails, instant messaging and those who text do not use the shift key or are perhaps to lazy or whatever their reason for not capitalizing any word that should be capitalized would be. It would be just as silly to evolve words to abreviations or acronyms because it is a popular thing to do.

At any rate, I would hope not! The English language has too many rules and words borrowed from other languages as it is now than to be concerned with keeping up with the latest ‘to do’!

I don’t think the capatilized I will go extinct, at least not for a long time. Our language is constantly evolving, but I is a word that has stuck with us. Whether we our studying the ancient Bible, reading Shakespeare, fiction from two hundred years ago or reading a newspaper articles today, the word I is present. I think that we are so used to using this word, even as the English language changes I think “I” will stay present, as will at least a few other words like we. Even if I eventually does die out, I think it will take a very long time, and it likely won’t happen in our lifetime.

I feel sure it will; with the laziness of speech, the laziness in writing clearly and the lack of grammatical knowledge, the ‘I’ will slide into oblivion together with other small but wonderful idioms of this language we know as English.

No, I do not. Capitalization is significant in instances such as expressing feeling in writing and emphasizing the important. Even as the internet trends go against proper grammar, the Caps Lock key on your keyboard will forever remain of use to those who take themselves seriously.

No, the capital I will not go extinct altogether. The reason it is not capitalized in emails and such is because people don’t take the time to push the ‘shift’ button. It’s a lot easier to just push ‘i’ instead of both buttons. However, while writing, we automatically write ‘I’ because that’s how we were taught.

Absolutely not! We just need better spell check in emails We know it’s got to be capitalized but since it’s just an informal message most of the time, it’s going to stay because it’s acceptable by the receiving party.

I like information, I always have. I couldn’t afford to go to college so I guess that’s the reason I like to at least get some understanding of things in general. So, to satisfy myself in that area of understanding, I find Dictionary.com very helpful. Their way to explain things and examples make it so simple and so helpful. Hurray!

I certainly hope that capitalization, and most forms of grammar thrown by the wayside lately with the advent of texting, does not go extinct. It is frustrating to think of how lax grammar has become in mass society. I hope it is not a permanent dismissal of formal written etiquette.

I often neglect to capitalize anything in an instant message or certain emails depending on my mood, and I’ve noticed the trend to drop the capitalized I; I’ve even chosen not to capitalize it in poetry so as to convey an absence of ego. But, I think if we see the colloquial abandonment of the convention, formal writing and literature will inexorably preserve it, since the two are more greatly influenced by all the old rules retained by proper English.

Though, now that I’m thinking about it, that letter capitalized by itself looks out of place next to its lowercase brethren, almost egomaniacal.

If memory serves from my studies of German, all nouns are capitalized in that language, not just proper nouns. I remember being delighted to find this out because being able to simply identify the nouns made comprehension much easier.

I’d suspect that the first person singular pronoun will continue to be capitalized in formal writing, but casual writing will drop it more and more. Much as one would never use “U” for “you” or “R” for “are” in formal writing, I’d guess it will never become proper to use “i” in the place of “I.”

Shudders run up and down my spine at the thought of the ninth letter of our alphabet to lose its capitalization when standing as the first person pronoun simply due to the laziness of those sending text messages. This person shall never stoop so low, but, alas, this view seems to be in the minority, and we shall eventually bid adieu to the capitalized personal pronoun. And after a bit of thought and effort, it is extinct, at least in this comment.

I always thought the capital letter “I” was a nice reflection of the more individualistic English culture. Whereas for example in the Spanish language the personal pronoun is often left out showing the more collectivistic nature of Latin cultures.

Definitely, I don’t even see the point in capitalizing “i” anymore, even in writing, whether it be an essay to my teacher or a personal note to my family. I just don’t care to. the only time my i’s are capitalized is when autocorrect corrects me.

No, capitalizing I is something we can’t stop writing. When typing people want to save time, so it’s left miniscule, but when we write we wont stop capitalizing are I’s. Plus, there’s always spell-check!

No i don’t think it will ever go extinct – the capital I also represents God,the “I Am”. In this sense, it will remain as a capital, clearly representing God. God is Love, I am Love. God is a Spirit. I am Spirit. God is Life, I am Life. As there is only one God there is only one ‘I’ but many ‘i’s’. I think it will be a natural progression to capitise I when refering to God or refering to man made in his image but lower case when refering to man in the human carnal sense. God says ‘I Am’, if capital i as a personal pronoun lost it’s meaning then it would leave only one ‘I’ and we won’t need to capitalise the Am/AM to show when we are refering to the one Almighty Infinite God, the great I Am. This would certainly be clearer and much simpler – I and my Father are one, i can of myself do nothing, I go to my Father, i am in the depths of hell, i see the light, I am the light, etc.”I AM that I AM” would clearly mean I am that I am – God is that God is or “I will be what I will be”. Though then you would have mankind using I to represent gods many. I figure we will continue to use I or i whenever we feel like it, as a personal pronoun until it ceases as a personal pronoun. That’s food for thought, I think!

Personally I believe that it will not be long until we have an entire “new” language based upon abbreviations. It began with abbreviations for Professionals, and Business names, and now texting. Recently I saw a list of abbreviations for texting. A very long list, and many of the abbreviations I was totally unfamilier with. Well, at least it would be better than misspelled words.

no doubt it will. when we write emails in a hurry, we often neglect capital letters in the beginning of sentences. why would ‘i’ be an exception? and by saying this, i not necessarily refer to English: other languages, like my native Russian or, say, Turkish, are not any better in this respect.

I think nowadays people are lazy to press capitalized I in e-mails and chattings, and this will led to the capitalized I go extinct.
After all, the language should be accordance with the people’s custom.

The I will always remain Capitalized. That’s right! as long as we stay selfish, and here in America selfishness is our middle name. The reason most people when they text do not capitalized the I in most cases, is for the sake of speed, or laziness.

Hmm…this is rather interesting. I think some thigs won’t change, like the amount of times people will talk about the same thing, or a habit like doodling in a notebook. Some things may be ridiculous, but they live on. I mean, we still use the semi-colon ; right? How is this truly different?

My bet is that “I” got capitalized not out of selfishness, but because, as was suggested in the article, it is more aesthetic and more importantly, noticeable to have it capitalized rather than lowercase. Particularly if the capital I has serifs.

I don’t believe capitalization will go extinct, although it is deteriorating in personal text messages and IMs today. I think that the grammar being used today is much worse compared to the capitalization issue.

Anyways, if “I” looked bad as a lonly, little single letter back then, I wonder why they did not capitalize “a” as well.

I thought with instant messaging the inconsistent nature of english spelling might be replaced with something more phonetic, i.e. ‘through’ would be spelled ‘thru’ or ‘throo,’ and so on. Hasn’t happened, shows how much I no.

The “I” must never go extinct. I think that is a very good reason to capitalise the I. I for one would be very sad if the poor little bleeder were to regress to being a thin and lonely “i”. What an undistinguished demise that would be.

Excuse me, but “I” and “a” are not the only accepted single-letter words in English. The other one is the interjection “O”, used in formal or poetic contexts as a respectful or emphatic form of address – as in “Hear, O Israel” (from the Bible), or “O mistress mine, where are you roaming?” (from Shakespeare). It’s a fairly old-fashioned usage, but it’s still definitely different from “oh”, the interjection of surprise etc. What’s more (and also unlike “oh”), “O” is virtually always capitalised, just like “I”. Why is that? Does anyone know the history behind this?

I don’t think the capitalized I will go extinct. Sure, in instant messaging and social media, it’s easier to use i than to use I. But in formal writing, or anything besides teenagers trying to quickly talk to each other, the capital I is still used. That’s just a silly idea.

That is quite interesting! Just plain: i does look weird. My spellcheck/autocorrect even changes it to a capital i. I think that capilatzatin my eventually go extinct for this letter, frankly because when texting: i am txting ; Emailing: i am emailing ; and sometimes when you are lazy, story writing: i am writing. It is hard to imagine, but my penmanship with the upper case I is slowly fading away. Whether or not this changes the whole “engilsh writing race” idea’s of the letter “i” I really don’t know.
For everyone who is reading this: next time you type something electronic, think of how many times your spellcheck/autocorrect changes your lower case i to upper case. Something to think on.
By the way, dictionary.com , continue your informational articles. I really enjoy reading the new ones everyday.

Wonderful! Continue making interesting things like these. They are very interesting. It was amusing. Even though I liked your essay thing please refrain from e-mailing me unless it is absolutely necessary.

The capitalized I going extinct.
This may well depend upon how widespread and ingrained “texting” becomes. When a new generation that has grown up with this type of ”
English” starts to take over literature publishing of all kinds, then we may see the evolution of the language to remove such cultural artifacts. There is no particular reason for the use of a capitalized “I” other than the character we accept as the “i” is so small and narrow. As the article suggests, capitalization makes it stand out.

Not necessarily… I think “I” will always remain capitalized in the domain of formal writing. The capitalized “I” going extinct is the same as “txt” spelling becoming the accepted standard–not going to happen, at least not for a while.

The capital I will never go extinct unless English, itself, goes extinct. That’s because we use I in most writing within our school and work lives. Connections, stories and just writing will usually relate to ourselves in some way and getting rid of the I would be considered ridiculous. It’s quite amazing how the I has evolved from what it once was though.

I have wondered that myself, and although poor e-mail/text grammar are pet peeves of mine, i prefer to make it lower case for the ‘selfish’ reasons specified in the article, unless it is something that would reflect poorly on me, such as a professional correspondence. It’s funny, i usually just come here to look up a word, but i always get distracted.

I doubt if the the personal pronoun I will be minimized. My hope is that primary schools in all english speeking countries are stricter in ensuring that language
rules are kept to the present standard.

By the way, being a norwegian national and being taught norwegian “booklanguage”, new-norwegian, old-norwegian and partly danish and swedish
(part of the corriculumn in secondary school) with close adhesion to local dialects,
the personel pronouns I, E and AE are very dominant on the western coast of
Norway, just across the north sea from GB.

i, for one, have refused to capitalize the word “i” from the very beginning.
lucky for me, i attended a VERY alternative high school in Vermont (now, sad to say, defunct) where i was encouraged to EXPRESS myself – even at the expense of common grammar.

in fact, MUCH to do with case seems rather arbitrary to me so i adopted my own system of using capital letters to STRESS something Important or to create graphic interest whenever the text seems to need it.

I think it won’t. It might in informal writing, but there’s no way everyone is going to stop in formal writing, as many will be afraid of seeming uneducated. It might, and it’s not too unlikely, but I don’t think it will any time soon.

It should. If we want to be logically consistent. We don’t capitalize any other personal pronoun.

And to the extent that language influences thought, it might reduce some of the overblown egocentrism that seems to characterize our American/Canadian culture. (I’m surprised we don’t capitalize ‘Me’!)

“Do you think the capitalized I will go extinct?” …Ever? Sure. Why not? After all, English is an ever-evolving language, isn’t it?

And as for having a reason for I’s extinction: Given the speed with which we now communicate, it seems a bit exhausting to have to reach down on a standard keyboard with one’s left pinky (or cross-right with one’s left thumb) to enable the “shift” key, in order to produce a capital version of the letter. Why, just the thought of all that work hurls me into exhaustion!

P.S. And just why should we English-speakers feel so full of ourselves, that we need to MAXIMIZE ourselves when we represent ourselves in the written word? Come on – did we really think we could ever get lost in the proverbial shuffle??

French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, Romanian, and others are Romance languages, not Romantic languages as you have above.

Romance languages are called that ultimately because they derived from a language (Latin) spoken by Romans. A more detailed explanation would involve a discussion of the use of the adjectival terms that have the stem latin- and roman- in classical and later forms of Latin.
‘Romantic’ has a slightly different origin; a romance used to be (centuries ago) a story that was written in a romance language rather than a more Germanic one. Typically they had to do with exciting adventures and love affairs. Then people started to use the word to describe situations that are typical of stories about love affairs.
A modern non-existent equivalent would be English speakers using the word ‘bodice-ripper’ for real-life behavior that matches what goes on in bodice-ripper novels.

It goes without saying that all things under the sun (including the sun) will eventually be extinct, but with regards of “I” falling into disuse, I suspect that it will be a very long time in coming. However, I also anticipate that the use of the lower-case version of the pronoun will continue to proliferate. As such, we may see use of “i” versus “I” may falling into respective camps of informal/low and formal/high English grammar. If only Ayn Rand and e. e. cummings were alive today to chime in on this discussion!

Will it? It probably will. Should it? Very definitely not. Why? Because these days everyone seems to be taking the lazy to everything. Some say “too much work to upper and lower case words.” Society has come of the age that words are shortened, mispelled and it appears to be acceptable and has spread like wildfire. This is not acceptable. There needs to be standards in grammer, writing and reading. Younger people have enough of a problem spelling and writing as it is what with computer doing all the thinking to compose sentences. If this slids, a lot of other proper structures will start to slid as well. Just my thoughts.

No chance that “I” will fade back down to the less emphatic “i.” Far too many young actors can find no more tempting a word to which to give emphasis than the name that designates their own egocentric selves. They live in an “I, me, my, mine,” universe. If evolution is to occur it is more likely that other pronouns will become capitalized than “I” would lose its prominence.

Yes and no. Informally I would leave all capitals out, as it just takes a few fractions of a second longer to hold the shift key, but in handwritten correspondence I would probably always retain them. I find myself typing in all-lowercase until I’m done sometimes and then rereading what I wrote to both edit it and capitalize everything. Some people won’t take you seriously if you don’t capitalize. Given my name is composed of initials, I’ll probably always capitalize those

The “i” is not capitalized in emails, instant messages and text because it requires an additional stroke-the shift key. In writing however, the lower case “i” required two strokes-one for the line and the other for the dot and thus it was easier to reduce it to one long stroke. Now, we don’t write as much and it is plausible that we may not find the capital “I” convenient with the additional shift key stroke. I don’t think it is a visual improvement since the “I” looks a lot better than the two strokes in “i” which may have resembled fly poop in the past when scrawled too quickly.

Writing purists will contend that capitalization is not on its way out. I think that with every new generation the rules of writing have shifted in various directions, and writing has a tendancy to shift or move in directions that some people will resist… until it becomes the norm.

I believe that capitalization will continue to be used for REASONS OF EMPHASIS in informal writing, but that formal writing will continue to hold on to the rule for many years to come. In terms of handwriting, there seems to be less and less people who actually utilize handwriting on a day to day basis, and it seems to be easier to type without reaching for the shift keys as often as capitalization rules require it in typed written English. So in this way, anything is possible.

Very interesting!
No, I don’t think so, because an i in a word and an I in my mind are in completely separate leagues. I is an important word in anything, and even if less conventional, it’s one of those traditions that I don’t think English will take off any time soon.

I find the ending interesting. It does seem as though English grammar – not just capitalization by itself – is gradually becoming less and less important to those that use it. It’s near common to find someone posting a comment in complete lowercase, creating nonexistent words, and wholly disregarding grammar.

I digress. It does seem as though English is in a class by itself, seeing how closely related other languages are – and with all the people mangling it, I sometimes wonder if an entire other language will we produced solely from misspellings and indecipherable pronunciation.

I’ve been using a lowercase i for probably 20 years, long before i could have “regressed” from emailing or texting. I started to change when i first thought about how arrogant it seemed to place myself above anyone else i might reference with a pronoun. When i realized that only we English-speakers did it, my mind was set.

Let dieties refer to Themselves with a capital I — i’m fine with a little i, thanks.

I was also taught to capitalize Mom or Dad when using them as names but not when using them as titles. For example, it’s “my mom” (with the modifier “my”) or “Mom” when it’s without the modifier. I always thought that the “I” was part of that same silly rule.